Psimet2001 

That was between the customer and the shop but it didn't seem like they had discussed that or that he was even thinking along those lines. The shop told him they could get a new rim to rebuild it but that they hardly ever build wheels and he hasn't ever built any carbon wheels so he gave the guy my name.

Turns out ENVE has a pretty solid warranty structure nowadays and even if it is second hand they will offer a "crash replacement" cost to the customer.

Customer is covering it or it's leaving my shop. Wasn't my deal (but easily could have been).

Psimet2001 

The nipple bed are such that the chamber ends up being air tight. *sad trombone*

WhyFi

I don't know about those tires specifically, but my Zipp 303S don't have drainage holes, which is pretty much the only niggle that I have against them. I got caught in two monsoons last summer and had to remove the tires and valve stems to drain them. Pain in the ass. That said, I haven't seen any reports of them exploding - I think that the Enve are really thin.

Edit - here's some of my ride cam footage of one of the storms

WhyFi

It is though, innit? I actually wasn't going to peel it, but then I remembered people *****ing online about how heavy the dried sealant gets, blah, blah, blah, so I decided to have a peeling session and weigh it. It was 27g, on the dot, in a 28mm tire with about 2k miles on it. I can live with those numbers.

Yeah, I didn't need too good of a reason.

sfrider 

My SES 3.4's have space around the spokes and the hard plastic (ENVE supplied) nut holding the valve stem in place doesn't hermetically seal. The rim is rounded and the nut is flat. But these are pretty small openings and I'm sure if you open up a compressor full tilt you'd blow the rim apart.

Greatestalltime

Reading this thread is bad luck. I’m bailing.

Psimet2001 

Yeah I did some digging in and between talking with ENVE and looking at the kits they have the secret is the "pressure relief system" that they have worked into the nut they use to hold the valve in place. It has 4 bypass holes drilled off-center in an array around the valve threading. Looks like it provides 4 channels to allow air to escape. Even then they say in their video on their kits that if you see a lot of sealant coming out of those channels to re-do the tape because it has been compromised (or risk the kaboom action).

I have a couple of deep carbon splinters from this one that aren't coming out easy. Looks like it's my body's chance to learn to ward off the evils of carbon or turn me into a superhero of some sort.

Lazyass

I got a puncture on my tubular (very rare event). I carry a small 2oz bottle of Stan's sealant. I pulled over, removed the valve core with the spoke wrench on my multitool and squirted half the bottle in the tube. 1oz, or 30ml, is enough for a 23mm road tire. Sealed up instantly and it sealed so well that a week later the tire was still at full pressure. Ran it with no issues until it was time to replace the tire.

Even if that didn't work I can swap out my spare tubular in less time than it takes to change a tube.

For clinchers, if I lived in an area with dirty roads I would run tubes with removable cores and either carry a bottle of sealant or just squirt the sealant in them during installation. I have zero interest in tubless tires. My experience with them on my MTB, even just trying to mount them, has turned me against them.

Psimet2001 

Felt the need to come back here and revisit this.

I don't know where I left off other than a general "tubeless is stupid" position. I switched bikes and consequently wheels/tires from the one that started this thread. Rode it all last year for my gravel rides. Took it out in the spring and went on a ride - hard turn and I burped it enough to lose pressure making me have to put a tube in. Got back and confirmed the sealant had dried up in both the front and the rear - granted it had been about 6 months. I put sealant in both and went on.

A couple weeks back I put the bike in the stand to clean it up and go over stuff before one of our larger gravel events here locally. As I was cleaning I was like, "what the heck is all over this frame??" Yes I don't clean my own gravel bike often - I kind of like keeping it on the dirtier than normal side for myself.

Turns out it was sealant. All over the seatpost. I never noticed a flat or softening of the tire. Round 4 goes to the tubeless setup. It has saved me once.... in 3 years... and left me high and dry 3 other times. but credit where credit is due.

Both tires were also empty of sealant again. I use Orange endurance and it's not really even lasting more than 3-4 months. Not even just low but completely dried out.

bbbean 

Unfortunately, the "you'll never flat again!" crowd hurts tubeless. Tubeless is a great tool hat will save your bacon...sometimes. If it was sold as something that would get you home without having to stop on the side of teh road, a lot more people would be happy with their tubeless.

If I understand the current thinking, there is now some evidence that tubeless, tubular, and good clinchers with latex tubes may have similar rolling resistance. If the difference between individual setups is as great or greater than the difference between types of setups, then the choice becomes easier to tailor to a particular situation.

WhyFi

In my case, prematurely dried out tires seems to indicate a number of sealed punctures that I wasn't aware of at the time - sometimes there's spray, sometimes there isn't - and I've had this happen in as little as 4 weeks. IOW, it's entirely possible that tubeless has saved your ass much more than once, though I don't have any experience with best-case (few/no punctures) OS Endurance longevity.

Bah Humbug

Tubeless definitely saved the crap out of me once, with a large screw that held air long enough to get me a few miles home. The Pirellis, with very short knobs, have also gotten a few visible slightly-wet knicks that never became an issue.

They are a pain to mount though; not so much in getting the tires on as the whole process of getting them on seated, filled with sealant, and holding air. With tubes a late-discovered flat would delay a ride by minutes. Now... now I'd need a second set of wheels.

Bolo Grubb

I think I will stick with Clinchers and tubes.

Trsnrtr

I had a pretty big slit in a tire a few weeks ago. It dropped to 40# before sealing but it did seal and I got home. I'm still riding it almost 500 miles later.

PeteHski

Same here. Didn't notice until after the ride. When I got home I just fired in a Dynaplug to fill the hole and it's been fine ever since. Tubeless tyres are great. Fit and forget. No more roadside tube swapping in years. Every time I do a Sportive event I'm amazed at the number of people I pass fixing flats by the roadside. It's not just the odd one or two. Obviously depends where you live, but our roads are pretty harsh on tyres with loads of potholes and sharp stones. Going tubeless was a no-brainer for me.

Branko D

For me tubeless with airliner inserts is just awesome although a pain to install tires sometimes. Don't carry tubes anymore, even, though. Still...

Just a few days ago I was going to try a 1hr TT kind of effort and along the way in ran into beer bottles broken all over both lanes, right in the middle of nowhere (later I remembered that that there was a pilgrimage along that road, probably explains it). Riding 23mm Corsa Speed TT tires, my rear wheel got properly cut up. The sealant was dry, I forgot to buy and pack a new repair and inflate cartridge, so I rode back home some 35km on 0 psi and airliner inserts.

The rear end was swaying side to side under pedalling forces which felt wonky, I didn't corner nearly as aggressively, and when I tried a threshold type effort it was about 10% slower for the same power, but it was rideable and it's liberating not to have to worry about putting in tubes on the go or what if it flats on a descent or whatever.

I had a flat (it still held a bit of air) happen on a mountainous half-IM triathlon recently, too, and I only really noticed it when I got out of the saddle, popped in a repair & inflate, and it held sufficient air to ride normally.
​​​​​​
With more sturdy tires like GP5000s, it is a pretty bombproof setup.

WhyFi

^^^ you're talking about the Vittoria jobbers, I take it? How long have you been running them? Are they mostly good for catastrophic flats?

Branko D

Yeah, Vittoria airliners. I've been running them for a bit less than half a year now, about the last 4500km or so.
​​​I figured it was just the thing needed to make paperthin TT tires (which don't seal punctures very well and puncture pretty easily) a practical choice for a longer race. Predictably, I ended up using the setup for all sorts of spirited rides.
​​​​​​
​​They work great both for tires which have punctured but are still holding some air (I've ridden about 70k on a punctured 23 in the rear which held maybe 60ish psi, and it didn't even feel too bad at all) where they prevent rim strikes and too much squirm when riding on a mostly deflated tire, and they work as a "run flat" option where you can keep riding on a tire which won't hold any air at all anymore (not exactly pleasant, but it works).

The downside is that it makes tire installation and removal harder (even using the clips and pliers provided with the kit, it's handy to have a tire jack in addition), and it adds 50g to the bike.
​​​​​​
​​​​​​​Liberating not to have to carry tubes, tire levers and the like. An alternate wheelset with those and 25mm GP5000s would be a basically bulletproof "fit and forget" option.

WhyFi

Are they a one-use only kind of thing? Or can you move an ~unused one from one tire to the next?

Branko D

Multi use. You do want to be careful not to damage them with them with tire levers when removing and installing tires, but the one I rode on with an entirely flat tire has a cut where the glass went through, but is otherwise fine.
​​​​​​

PeteHski

I keep thinking about those, but I find a good tubeless setup is pretty bombproof anyway. But then I'm not running paper thin TT tyres, so I can see the point for that case. For long rides I use either Pirelli Cinturato Velos (which are very puncture resistant anyway) or slightly faster Pirelli P-Zero Race TLRs, which give medium puncture protection. With a quality sealant I haven't had a problem with flats, even with pretty large cuts. I just carry a Dynaplug kit and 1 spare tube as a last resort.

Branko D

Well, another data point for the airliners, went out to do a 320K yesterday. So, at km 151 I feel a rock strike the side of the tire and hisssss, sealant spraying everywhere, with a good gash in the sidewall. Anyway, being close to the halfway point, I keep gingerly riding, get there, have a coffee and decide to just ride home on it, normal power, no soft pedalling malarkey, to see what happens.

It feels like riding on a flat, the speed at the same power is obviously lower - about 5km/hr, and you don't want to lean it in a corner, but it works.

At around km 218 I feel it going whump-whump-whump and looking down I see that one part of the tire is unsupported because the liner separated at the seam, as I found out later, and I pulled into a nearby town, stopped the computer at 221km and hitched a ride on a bus home. The tire is completely kaput. Given they advertise the liners as good for 50km, it has certainly exceeded it, between this and last week.

https://www.strava.com/activities/5866526454

So, conclusions - one, I'm going to stop riding TT tires outside of races only, two, these things are great for, say, a triathlon because you can just finish it especially if you're near the end, but I need to bring plugs and so on for long rides.

PeteHski

Yeah, doesn't make any sense doing 300km rides on TT tyres! Airliners sound great for their intended purpose, but I decided they are not really much use for long rides. Better to just run a more resilient tyre tubeless. I've done about 15k miles over the past two seasons like that without a single flat on some very rough roads.

Racing Dan

The down side to air liners is, they make the tyres even harder to get on or off.

and they are silly expensive.

phrantic09

Best kind of puncture are the ones you didn’t know you had. I get a lot of those.